


Within the Winter Silence

by TruthandLies



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Christmas, Dragon!Mal, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Magic, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 13:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17162825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TruthandLies/pseuds/TruthandLies
Summary: Mal is searching for a world of her own. Evie knows something Mal does not: The world exists within them both. It thrums in the winter silence.





	Within the Winter Silence

**Author's Note:**

> A Secret Santa gift written for thats-a-wolf-howling-at-the-moon, and posted here for all to enjoy. Happy holidays!

There’s magic in the silence. 

Magic unlike anything Evie’s ever known. 

It’s not petty and cruel, like Mother’s long-gone magic with its poisonous apples and its hearts-inside-boxes.

It’s not vicious and ferocious, like Maleficent’s dragon-claws and her dragon-fangs-ripped-across-innocent-throats.

It’s not like Fairy Godmother’s wand waves or the Genie’s lamp or King Beast’s rose.

It’s the magic of the unknown. The magic of anything-is-possible, if you just believe.

It’s the magic of icicle-coated pine trees stretching up toward the starry night, their branches dancing in a wind-gone-cold. And the magic of Evie’s horse’s hooves, as she guides the creature from the Auradon Prep stables through the dance of winter trees.

Evie gazes into the furry branches, which seem to beckon her closer into their grove, and then she gazes up into the stars, which seem to wink hello from their skyward perch. And she gazes out at the lake, where a magical dragon whooshes across the expanse of water, the creature’s purple wings reflected upon the lake’s glass surface.

_It’s the magic of knowing what’s inside Mal’s heart, even when Mal herself is still searching._

“Whoa.” Evie tugs on her white horse’s reigns, bringing the animal to a stop.

The horse snorts and tosses her snow-white mane.

The dragon snorts and greets Evie with her unflinching gaze: A gaze of never-ending emerald, fiery and knowing. Knowing that Evie will not give up until Mal has found the secrets to unlock her world and given Evie a key.

Mal’s been searching for a world-her-own for three months, ever since she relinquished her someday-crown and Ben’s heart. _(“Because I love him, E, I do. But not the way he loves me. I don’t know how to love someone like Ben with my whole heart. We just don’t fit.”) A silence followed her words. Heady with secrets neither Mal nor Evie knew how to speak._

She’s been searching ever since she sat inside Fairy Godmother’s classroom, and listened to the headmistress’s lectures about a world-without-magic. _(“I’m not Mal of the Isle, and I’m not Mal of Auradon. Who am I, E?” Evie had taken Mal’s hand. “You’re Mal. Just Mal. And that’s all you need to be.”)_

She’s been searching since the night she sat at her desk and stared at the ruins of her mother’s cage. A cage now lizardless, her mother escaped back to the Isle. Ever since the night she cradled a glass dragon between forefinger and thumb, worrying its wings with her nails.

She's been searching ever since she stood at the threshold of their room, her eyes gleaming with secrets-not-yet-uncovered, and said, “Do you ever wonder who you really are, E? I mean, without the glitz and glamour of Auradon? And without the wickedness of our mothers?”

Seated at her sewing table, Evie clicked the switch to her sewing machine, pausing it mid-punch. There were silences between Mal’s words. Silences that spoke of uncertainty and wonder. “What are you asking, M?”

Mal sighed. “I don’t know. I…” She shoved her hands into her jacket pockets. “It’s hard to explain. I just – I’m gonna go out for a bit.” She turned toward the door.

Evie jumped up from her chair. “Wait.”

Mal froze with her hand around the knob. “Yeah?”

“You can talk to me.” Evie strode across the room “I – I hear you.” _And everything you’re not saying. Everything you want to ask, but don’t know how._

Because Mal’s silences were Evie’s, too. The wonder of not knowing. The uncertain magic of discovery. Discovering who they were outside of everything and everyone else.

And maybe…

Mal’s fingers trembled as they stroked the metal knob. “What do you hear?”

_…Maybe who they were to each other, especially now that Ben and Mal were nothing more than friends._

As if it had taken on a life of its own, Evie’s hand curled itself around Mal’s shoulder. “I hear everything, I think. Even the things you aren’t saying.”

A cool breeze blew through their room, ruffling Mal’s hair, mingling with the sigh that broke from Mal’s lips. Now it was no longer just her hand trembling. Her entire body seemed to tremble.

Gripping Evie’s hand, holding it in place, she turned from the door. “Do you remember that night back on the Isle, E?” Her voice dipped, diving into a whisper. “That Christmas?”

Evie’s heart dipped, too, as a scene painted itself within her mind. The bleak Isle streets, grey with sludge that would never become snow. The shouts and catcalls of the Isle residents, who rushed at each other baring fangs and swords, eager to steal anyone’s Christmas stash. And the shivering girl with the gnarled purple hair and the cheek blackened with a fist-shaped bruise, who skirted past the annual brawls and hid herself in the shadowy crevice of an alley.

An alley where Evie was huddled, reading a half-torn book. Caressing a page where snow blanketed a landscape of pine trees and stars.

Evie had dropped the book and hopped to her feet. “Mal?” The name was long on Evie’s tongue, the _a_ starting low, then rising to a pitch as Evie glimpsed the torn sleeve of Mal’s jacket and the tears in Mal’s eyes. A name out of control. “M, what happened? Who did this?”

Mal pinched her lips together, as if forming the letter _M_. _M_ for _Mother_. But a shadow flickered across her face, and she sighed instead, pushing her lips apart. Her eyes flared green, then the green died, leaving them teary and dull.

A silence fell. A silence infused with heartbreak and shame.

Evie knew that silence. Knew it every time her mother smacked her cheek to turn it red, or forced her to starve to _prettify her waistline. (“For evil’s sake, Evelyn, how did you get so fat?”)_

A silence broken only when Mal glanced down at the torn page of Evie’s book, where snow turned the world a brilliant white. 

“Wonder what the Isle would be like if it could snow here?” Mal pointed her boot toward the page.

Evie stooped to grab her book, and stood to bring the page closer to Mal. “Sometimes I imagine it does. See, look.” She tapped the page. “These pine trees are just like those blackened ones on the edge of our sea. If you squint your eyes just right, you can imagine our trees are covered in snow, too.”

Mal tilted her head and studied the drawing. “Do you imagine a lot?”

“All the time.” Evie nodded. “Like, you smell the moldy dough coming from the bakery?”

Mal scoffed and kicked out at a rock. “Wish I didn’t.”

“Then don’t.” Evie gripped Mal’s hand, tangling their fingers together. “Imagine that the dough is sweet. So sweet, it turns our noses warm.”

Mal breathed in deep, and her features twisted into a grimace. “I don’t think it’s working.”

“Try.” Evie squeezed her hand. It was the longest she’d ever touched Mal. There was something warm and electric about the feel of Mal’s skin. It was so wonderful, she cupped Mal’s hand with her other hand, too. “Just make up your mind that the dough is sweet.”

Mal gazed down at their joined hands, something like fire flickering in her no-longer-dull eyes. “Okay. The dough is sweet.” She sniffed. And her grimace disappeared, becoming a look of wonder instead. “E, I think it’s working.”

“Great.” Evie tugged on Mal’s hand, leading her deeper into the alley. “Now look at this alley. It may be coated in gray sludge, but imagine that it’s white snow.”

Mal squinted her eyes, turning them into fiery green slits. But her lips began to curl. They curled so wide, her smile became a grin. “I see it. It’s really snow.”

Evie whooped. “I told you, M! You’ve got magic, and you don’t even know it.”

Mal leaned her head against Evie’s shoulder.

Mal’s touch was magic, too. It was a shivery kind of magic that seeped beneath Evie’s skin, warming her from the inside-out.

Mal shivered. “Let’s spend Christmas together, then, E,” Mal said. “We can imagine away the brawls and our mothers, and pretend like the world is our own.” 

Mal and Evie had imagined the entire day, turning the Isle into a beautiful Christmas forest covered in snow. It was the first Christmas Evie had ever laughed. The first Christmas she had ever discovered the wonder of touch. The first Christmas she had ever discovered the wonder of Mal.

Back in their dorm room, Evie caressed Mal’s shoulder with her thumb, reveling in the touch that had always been electric. “Of course I remember that Christmas. I’ll never forget it.”

Mal closed her eyes. “And do you remember,” she said, leaning toward Evie’s touch, running the tips of her fingers along Evie’s hand, “how we promised that we’d make the world our own?”

“Mm-hmm.” A hum, dancing from Evie’s lips. All she was capable of, with Mal’s fingertips working their magic.

Mal’s eyes sprang open. Fiery and green. “I’m still trying to figure out how.”

“Let me help you,” Evie whispered.

Mal shook her head. “I don’t know if you can. I think I have to find out for myself.”

A silence sprang up between them. Magical in all the emotions that breathed through its charged spaces.

Moments later, Mal left the room, in search of a Mal-without-limits, a Mal who existed in all the spaces that made up her world.

For days after, Evie glimpsed that Mal in classes, when Fairy Godmother droned on about a world without magic, a world where people were defined by books and not by the living spells thrumming through their blood. She glimpsed the Mal-of-hidden-spaces in the spaces of Mal’s notebook, where Mal penciled a dragon-Mal with wings outstretched, its wild eyes cast toward a sky-of-no-limits. The creature’s nostrils flared, as if sniffing out a place where Auradon’s values and Mal’s Magical Malness could coexist.

“Mal.” Fairy Godmother dropped her chalk onto the metallic overhang.

Mal glanced up from her sketch. “Yeah?”

“Pay attention.” FG tapped the chalkboard, where her lesson had come to life in black-and-white.

Mal sighed. “Yes, Fairy Godmother.” She slapped her notebook shut, hiding both her magic and her art. Pieces of herself.

But she continued to search for her own world.

Evie glimpsed the Mal-of-hidden-spaces every night thereafter, when she stared out at a sky-of-stars, every so often raising her arms as if ready to take flight. “Do you ever wonder,” Mal said one night, when the Auradon Prep grounds were becoming frosty with winter chill, “if all magic is bad? Or if it’s just the magic used to hurt other people?”

Once again, Evie’s hand took on a life of its own. It curled itself around Mal’s shoulder, thrilling at the electricity pulsing beneath Mal’s skin. “I think,” she said, rubbing her thumb in concentric circles, “that’s for us to decide.”

Mal released a breath, her nostrils flaring as if the dragon inside was releasing breath, too. “Yeah. That makes sense.”

Mal raised her arms, a fairy girl ready to soar.

Evie glimpsed the Mal-of-hidden-spaces when the school turned red and green with holly and pine, and students hummed Auradon carols through the halls _(“Gods bless ye, merry princesses, let magic not destroy…”)_ , and Ben invited their friends to decorate the school’s Christmas tree.

They trudged across grounds of frosted white, Jay and Carlos, Lonnie and Jane, Mal and Evie, and Ben-trying-not-to-look-at-Mal. They gathered together in the lobby of the school, boxes of Christmas ornaments at their feet. A towering pine tree wafted its thick fragrance through the space, and Mal stooped to run her fingers along a boxful of round decorated ornaments. She swooped a fingertip along the belly of one of Cinderella’s mice, and she brushed a thumb along the turrets of Beast’s castle, and she tapped her purple nails along a tower of Belle’s library books.

And then she glanced up at Ben. “Where are the other ornaments?”

Ben turned pink, his game of not looking at Mal now lost. “The other ornaments?”

“Yeah.” Mal stood and crossed her arms. “You know. The ones of Fairy Godmother’s wand and Genie’s lamp and –”

“We don’t use those ornaments anymore.” Ben’s words pushed together, a rush of syllables and vowels. He glanced at Mal’s cheek, her nose, the boxes on the floor. “They’re in the basement of the museum.”

Mal’s nostrils flared, but she sketched her features into an expression of disinterest. “Oh.”

That _oh_ was left unsketched, its valleys and sighs full of Mal’s unexpressed emotion.

Jay and Carlos stopped poking each other with ornaments shaped like Mulan’s sword.

Lonnie and Jane glanced up from their boxes, an assortment of tinsel tangled around their arms.

Dude padded out from behind the Christmas tree, ears lifted and head cocked.

“Everything okay?” Jay asked, dropping his sword into a box.

“Of course,” Mal said, her words pointed and sharp. “Why wouldn’t it be?” She kicked her box to the side and then, with everyone still watching, grabbed her jacket from the bannister and marched toward the door. “I don’t really feel like decorating. You guys do it for me.”

She rushed to the door, but paused for a moment to glance back at Ben, who was still not looking at her. “Ben?”

Ben startled and raised his gaze to Mal’s. An unspoken silence thrummed between them. A silence of knowing. A silence of wistfulness. A silence of pain-still-healing.

Mal waved her hand at the tree. “Thanks for inviting us to decorate. It – it means something.”

Ben tilted his lips into the whisper of a smile. “We’re still friends, Mal. We always will be.”

Mal nodded. “Always.” She glanced at Evie, and a different kind of silence thrummed between them. “See you back in the dorm, E.”

With that, she rushed outside.

The door slammed shut behind her, and Evie whirled on Ben. “Why is it,” she asked, the words like broken glass against her throat, “that every person in this kingdom gets to have an ornament except for people with magic? People like Mal?” _People like me._

Both of Ben’s eyebrows raised. Behind him, Jay’s mouth formed a circle-of-surprise, and Carlos’ eyes flew wide.

Ben tugged his hand through his hair. “I guess I never really thought of it like that.”

Evie touched his hand. "Don't you think," she said, her voice edged with a gentle warmth, " that it might be time to start?"

Ben stared at the door, glints of unspoken thought shining in his eyes. "Maybe." 

"Maybe," Evie breathed. She grabbed her jacket and dashed outside, bowing her head against a chill wind. The grounds weren’t yet snowy; they were white with frost and grey with sludge. Evie slipped through the slush and cupped her hands to her mouth. “Mal?” Her best friend’s name was a blast of sound, greeted by nothing but silence. “Mal?” she called again.

Silence fell, broken only by the howl of wind.

Evie shivered and slid up the zipper of her blue leather jacket. _She couldn’t have just disappeared. Not that quickly._ She spun in a circle, searching for her best friend. 

But Mal was nowhere to be found.

“Mal?!” Evie shouted, her voice mingling with the swish of shivering pine trees. She cast her gaze to the sky, as if seeking the answers in the stars. She discovered it instead in the silhouette of a dragon, her wings unfurled against the crescent moon. “Mal.” The name was a breath, a caress on Evie’s tongue.

Her best friend was gorgeous against the night sky. Mal breathed out blasts of fire, decorating the stars with her own fiery art. Art impossible on the Isle and outlawed in Auradon, but intimately connected with Mal’s dragon soul.

Evie slipped her hands into her pockets and kept her face lifted to the sky. As Mal spiraled and dove, creating fiery sparks, a thought formed itself into Evie’s mind. _This_ is _our world._

She just had to help Mal realize the truth.

Every night for two weeks, Evie follows Mal outside. Because Mal can go much quicker in dragon form, Evie starts borrowing the school’s horses. A chestnut mare who clip-clops across the frost. A blazing black stallion who whinnies and lifts his hooves. A pure white mare who nuzzles Evie’s palm when she feeds her a cube of sugar, and then carries Evie across grounds frozen and silent.

Icicles cling to the branches of trees. A brilliant full moon floats in the starry sky. And Mal soars through the heavens, creating her dragon art.

Evie pulls on her mare’s reigns, bringing the horse to a stop. She’s stopped beneath Mal each night for two weeks, and each night, Mal has soared and swooped and pretended to ignore her. Because Evie cannot exist in a world-meant-only-for-Mal, even though Mal has always existed in a world-meant-only-for-Evie.

Evie closes her eyes and imagines that tonight, this night, a day before Christmas, Mal stops pretending to ignore her and welcomes her into her world of starlight and dragon flame.

Evie’s horse whinnies, and Evie opens her eyes.

Mal is gazing back. Gazing at her through fiery green eyes, knowing and shining-with-emotion.

Mal breathes a flume of flame across the sky, and then she flaps her wings and returns to Earth. A moment later, and the dragon has become a fairy girl, wearing a wardrobe of purple leather. She pats out an ember sparked upon her jacket and steps to Evie.

Evie slips from her horse and stands before Mal. “Hey,” she whispers, leaning down to blow out an additional spark. When she straightens, Mal is still gazing back at her.

“Every night, E. Every night, you’ve come out here. You’ve stood in the cold. You’ve frozen in the wind. Why?”

Evie’s hand has taken on a life that is all Evie. It curls itself around Mal’s hand, connecting them skin-to-skin. “You’ve been looking for a world, and I couldn’t let you do it alone. Because my world has always been a world of Mals. I was hoping your world might one day be a world of Evies.”

Mal breathes in deep. “So you’ve been keeping watch over me.”

“The same way you’ve always kept watch over me.” Evie shivers, not from the gust of wind blowing through their hidden clearing, but from the electricity pulsing beneath her best friend’s skin. “You wanna try something?”

Mal’s gaze is a caress. “Sure.”

“Close your eyes.” Evie’s voice is a gentle breeze infused with warmth.

Mal blinks and closes her eyes.

“Now imagine,” Evie says, sliding their fingers together. “This is your world. _Our_ world.” The word _our_ is forged from the silence of echoes. “What do you want it to be?”

A smile curls itself at the corners of Mal’s lips. Her breathing deepens. Deepens with the rhythm of dreams-come-to-life.

The wind fades to a breeze. The temperature drops to a chill. And a flutter of snow fills the onyx night, turning it white.

It’s a magic once unavailable to them, imagination-turned-real, and the fairy girl has claimed it as her own.

Mal opens her eyes. They are the eyes of a dragon, blazing with fire. They are the eyes of a fairy, warm with love. “I want it to be ours,” she whispers. “And I want it to be magical.”

Evie’s heart soars as if with dragon wings. “Done.” The word is thick in her throat. “And done.” She tugs Mal closer. Slides a strand of purple behind Mal’s ear. And pulls the girl-who-is-her-world into a kiss.

Mal sighs against Evie’s lips and kisses back.

That year for Christmas, the tree begins to change. Ben rescues the box of magical ornaments from the museum, and adds them to the tree.

And Evie sews Mal a gift: A purple dragon with wings outstretched, a clip for a Christmas tree sewn into its belly.

Mal’s dragon gaze is brilliant when she opens the gift and traces the wings.

Her touch is electric when she takes Evie’s hand and leads her to the tree.

And her kiss is magic after they’ve perched the dragon on the highest branch, where it watches over the symbols of Auradon.

There’s magic in the silence that follows. The magic of their kiss. The magic of their world. The magic of them.


End file.
